There are various methods of producing pictures. The automatic developing instant type pictures, regular snapshots, portraits, etc. Pictures are now even able to be reproduced upon articles of clothing with the help of computers.
Picture reproduction of late via videocassette recorders has become commonplace. Some of the advantages of a videocassette recorder (VCR) are slow motion and freeze-frame viewing. The additional utilization of a camcorder makes the viewing all the more selective and convenient. There are both portable and table model videocassette recorders as well as minicamcorders. However, the size of these units can still present a rather imposing presence in a semi-private setting such as an office or work position. The advent of the electronic microchip has made pocket-sized television sets of the type described by inventors Y. Hirasawa and O. Kameda of U.S. Pat. No. 4,562,478 increasingly popular. And although some of the even smaller sets with their 1.3 inch liquid crystal display (LCD) screens allow them to be carried about in the shirtpocket, still, a television broadcast is not as personalized or sentimentally inspiring as a photograph.
Given the human fascination for a technologically produced picture and the paramount event-preserving tradition of the photograph, the invention herein described integrates the two facets.
In its initial appearance the invention described herein--which is an LCD photograph--looks very much like a thin LCD shirt-pocket calculator, some of which operate entirely off of solar cells and have a thickness of only 1/16 of an inch.
There are microprocessor-based toys available which have LCD screens upon which rough sketches may be structured by the user and up to a dozen displays stored in memory. These same displays have animated abilities with speed control. However, a brief comparison between this device and the invention described herein will readily reveal many fundamental differences.